Hawk's Cross

by David Collenette

  Her accent was getting thicker again and she was stumbling around her English.

  I looked her in the eye. “What is it that you actually do for Ethan, Monique?”

  Brushing a tear from her cheek with the heel of her hand, Monique said, “I am personal assistant and coordinator.”

  “So, Ethan runs this huge company and employs some girl with no experience and poor English to be his personal assistant?”

  “Fuck you! I work hard and do good job!”

  “What about Luther? Does he do a good job?”

  “Luther is driver.”

  “Driver? Right. A driver that spends most of the day sat in Ethan’s office and is constantly within a few feet of him.”

  A flicker passed across her face; doubt?

  “Fuck you, Matthew Hawk. Fuck you. You don’t know what things are. I work hard and Luther work hard and Karen worked hard.”

  “And now Karen’s dead. She killed herself, is that right?”

  “Yes!”

  “Really? I thought she wouldn’t do that?”

  “She wouldn’t!”

  “But…”

  “I don’t know what made her do that. Karen was good friend. I don’t think she would do that but she did, OK? Don’t know why!”

  “Come on, Monique, use your brain. She didn’t kill herself. You know she didn’t, and if she didn’t then someone else did. I bet Karen was very grateful to Ethan for giving her such a wonderful opportunity, right? Maybe one too good to be true?”

  “Ethan is good man,” she said but the conviction had begun to slip out of her voice.

  “Like I said, a real saint.”

  Monique had nowhere to go and, clearly on the back foot, came back with a shield of anger. “I don’t know why you say bad things but you don’t know. You don’t know! So, fuck you, Matthew Hawk. Fuck you! You say you friend to me, but you nothing but hateful person.”

  She was yelling at me by now and people around us chose to either ignore the event or to stare. Either way, we were gaining a wide berth from most people.

  “Whatever,” I said.

  “No! Whatever, you! Stay away from me. You no friend to me now!” She shook her head and a tear flew off her cheek. I watched it land on the pavement with a tiny splat.

  I looked back up at her and she was staring straight into my face. Her eyes blazed with anger but the rest of her face was struggling to keep the rest of her emotions at bay.

  I looked her in the eye. “You know I’m right.”

  She slapped me hard across the face. I felt the warm, numb sting begin to bloom as my ears rung. In the background I heard a group of teenagers laughing.

  She leaned in close to me as I rubbed my cheek.

  “Fuck you,” she said and then turned and walked away.

  I watched her walk away. When she was some distance away and merging into the crowds she stopped and slipped her phone out of her pocket. She dialled a number and made a call. I had no idea who she was calling but I thought it was probably someone who could make her feel a bit better. At least that’s what I thought at first until I saw her turn, ever so slightly, towards me and glance in my direction. When she saw me looking at her she turned away, completed her conversation and hung up the phone. Something about this didn’t feel right.

  I looked around the Square. Some people were staring but the majority were just carrying on like nothing was different. The group of teenagers had moved on. Everything moves on, including me.

  Where was the person I used to be? Could I ever get that person back? As I looked around, London seemed alien to me. London had been my home for so long and I’d trusted it. It was comfortable and familiar, able to offer me what I wanted; the closest I’d ever felt to having a home.

  People often referred to me as homeless, but that wasn’t really true. London was my home and in some ways I’d been much luckier than most. People’s homes were often a small brick box which they had to lock and protect. My home had been the entire city. Until now. Now it felt as unfamiliar and hostile as another world.

  I made my way south of the river and to my new studio apartment. It was above a kebab takeaway and smelled like warm grease when I kept the window open.

  In the corner of the room was a box room, built to be a small shower room. I took a lukewarm shower and lay on my bed listening to the noises from the street outside.

  I needed to get away.

  I’d met Patch via an advert in the evening paper when I was looking for somewhere to rent.

  Patch wasn’t his real name. His real name was Alexis Pachis but most people called him Patch. Greek by birth, Patch had moved to the UK when he was a small boy with his parents and he’d started working with his uncle delivering fish when he was twelve.

  At sixteen, Patch had decided that smelling of fish twenty-four hours a day wasn’t for him and so had started saving every penny he earned. Leaving school had given him the opportunity to earn more and so he had taken a second job with his father who was a building contractor.

  By twenty-five, Patch had saved enough money and learned enough about building to finally go out on his own.

  He’d bought a small house in a terrible state of repair and, doing most of the work himself, managed to sell it on for a reasonable profit. He liked the work and loved the money it made. More importantly, bricks and wood didn’t smell like fish. He’d never eat fish again.

  Although he’d worked hard and turned a fair profit on his first few ventures, he had fallen victim to the crash of the housing market and poor health.

  He’d sold most of the properties he’d had for what little profit he could achieve and decided to change directions.

  So finally, at forty-eight, he’d bought a building consisting of a shop premises on the ground floor and six studio flats above it. The shop he rented out to his daughter’s husband to run as a kebab takeaway, one of the flats he converted for his own use and the rest he converted and rented out.

  It was enough to keep him comfortable with his wife, Agatha, and save for their retirement. In addition, it kept him close to his business.

  I knocked on the door.

  “Agatha! The door!” yelled Patch from inside.

  “Sure, sure. I’ll get the door. Don’t you think about getting up. It will be a nice change from cleaning the kitchen for me. Stay there and keep the TV warm!”

  The TV got louder as Patch had obviously turned it up to drown out his wife’s complaints.

  The door opened and I smiled at Agatha. She smiled back. “Patch, it’s that English boy from number three. He needs to speak to you. Patch!”

  “OK, OK! I’m coming!” I heard him heave himself out of a chair and he came to the door.

  “Ah, Matthew my friend, how are you?”

  “Hey Patch, I’m well thanks. You?”

  “My back is playing up today. I have these new tablets but they don’t do any good really.”

  “Yes,” shouted Agatha from inside, “and they do nothing for his laziness either!”

  I couldn’t help smiling. These two spent all day yelling at each other but you’d never see them apart.

  Patch sighed. “What may I do for you, my friend?”

  “I’d like to pay two months’ rent in advance,” I said. “I’m going on holiday and I want to make sure everything’s OK.”

  I held out an envelope stuffed with enough cash for the next two months’ rent.

  Patch laughed. “If all of my tenants were like you, I’d be a rich man.”

  With ears like a bat when it came to money, Agatha came back to the door. She took the envelope from me with a smile, slid a twenty pound note out of it which she tucked into Patch’s shirt pocket and scurried away with the rest.

  Patch watched her leave and then loo
ked back at me. With a sigh and a smile he said, “Well, maybe not.”

  I smiled back. It was hard not to like Patch. We chatted for a few minutes about nothing in particular and then I made my excuses and headed out with a bag on my shoulder.

  It was time to leave.

  I figured that two months would give me enough time to decide if I was ever coming back.

  I decided that I’d tell Claudia that I was going. Looking back, I was probably trying to find someone who would give me a reason to stay. Everything in my world had changed. Everything that I knew about myself didn’t really count for much and I found myself becoming more and more morose over the past few weeks.

  It was after seven when I got to She-She-Hot and Claudia was standing out front as usual, smoking. She looked bored but when she spotted me approaching she stood up straight, smiled and raised an eyebrow. “Hey Matt!”

  Her warm welcome stirred feelings in me. Is this it? Is my only friend a gone-to-seed stripper in a failing, sleazy strip club?

  She hugged me and we chatted for a bit about nothing.

  “OK,” she said, “you want to tell me what’s eating you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Hell, boy, you look like you’re about to jump off a fucking bridge and I don’t need that in my head. What’s happening?”

  “I’m fine, I was just thinking of getting out of here for a while.”

  “Get out of here to where? This is as good as it gets.” She laughed.

  I stood there and thought about what she said. Where was I going? Getting out seemed like a great idea but I’d had nowhere in mind. My experience of adult life had pretty much revolved around London. I knew no one else; nowhere else. This is what my life had amounted to so far.

  I’d patted myself on the back for my ingenuity, my ability to survive on my own, but where had it got me? A solitary existence. All around me people were living lives I could only dream of and my only form of subsistence was the blood money given to me by some insane psychopath, giving me a remote semblance of normality.

  How screwed up was that? And, I’d used it. I hadn’t dropped it into the river. I’d allowed myself to use that money to ease my life, when so many had died. It might not have been directly my fault that they had died but I was in there somewhere; I was involved. Up to the point where I’d used that money I’d been the victim too; manipulated, controlled and almost destroyed. However, the second I’d used that cash I had become complicit. I was responsible. The feeling hit me in the gut like a rock.

  “Hey, you still here?” Claudia asked, looking concerned.

  “Yeah. No. Look, I don’t know. I just can’t do this anymore.”

  “Come on. Come in with me.” She led me downstairs and up to the bar.

  “Max, get this boy a drink. He’s way past taking shit off nobody so don’t be giving him no grief about it neither.”

  Max walked down the bar and stood opposite me. I looked up into his face and he stared back at me, impassively. After a few seconds he reached below the counter and brought out a glass. He sloshed some brown liquid into it and pushed it across the bar to me.

  I took the drink and gulped it down in one and coughed as the fire hit my throat. The second I put the glass down he refilled it. I drained it again and once more he filled it. I went to lift it again but he grabbed my wrist. “I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with you, kid, but that’s your lot. Drink it slow.”

  He was squeezing my wrist and I felt trapped. Panic rose in me. I didn’t want to be held down. I yanked my wrist free and stumbled back off the bar stool I was sitting on and hit the floor.

  I heard a woman laughing at me and when I turned I saw a near-naked girl on the stage sniggering behind her hand. There were no customers in the club. She’d got up to dance when Claudia had brought me down but realising it was just me she’d stopped and had been leaning on a pole just watching.

  “What are you staring at?” I shouted at her.

  “That’s enough,” said Max.

  I span around to face him. “Is it? Is it enough? You have no idea what enough is. What’re you going to do, eh? I decide what enough is. No one tells me what to do or where to go or who to be. It’s not enough!”

  I was shouting now and I could feel tears running down my face but I didn’t care. Max had straightened up. If I was more together I’d have read his body language; body language that was yelling “stop” in every language under the sun, but I was done. I felt that I had nothing left to lose and I needed to get out. Finally I realised what I needed to get away from and it was me. I needed to be away from me but I couldn’t be.

  Max and I stared at each other for a moment that seemed to last for hours. Then I broke the deadlock. I picked up the glass and threw it across the room. The girl on the stage ducked and squealed as it flew wide past her and smashed against the wall.

  The next thing I knew I was being propelled through the club by my collar, past the stage, through a curtain at the back and slammed into a push-bar on a fire escape where I was launched across an alley and into a pile of boxes and bins.

  “I’ve put up with your shit long enough, kid, and you just went way too far.”

  Max was on me. He lifted me up by the collar and punched me square in the face. Everything went weird. I didn’t feel the punch but I was suddenly unaware of where I was. Dazed and stunned I span around and slumped onto the floor. I could vaguely hear raised voices as if underwater. As I sat there I began to come around. I noticed the smell of old food and waste. I smelled whisky that was on my shirt from where I’d thrown the glass.

  As I became more aware of my surroundings I started to feel the pain in my face. My nose and jaw were hurting and my face felt wet. I reached up to touch it and when I pulled my hand away I could see blood on my fingers.

  My hearing cleared and I looked up at the voices, shouting. Claudia and Max were standing in front of each other. Claudia was yelling into Max’s face and Max was holding her arms down.

  “He’s just a fucking kid, Max. What the fuck did you go and do that for?”

  She struggled out of his grip and came over to me. She helped me to my feet and looked at my face. “You sure are a stupid pain in the arse, Matt.” She turned to Max. “Help me get him inside and fix him up!”

  Ten minutes later I was sitting in an office with a damp cloth pressed against my nose. I’d swallowed some pills which I hoped were painkillers and was carefully sipping a glass of water.

  My whole head hurt. My jaw ached and my nose and cheeks throbbed and stabbed with pain.

  The door opened and Max came in. He sat down opposite me and put his fists on the table. I stared at them. The right one was pink where he’d hit me but that was it. What had I been thinking?

  “So, what makes some weedy little runt like you act like a trapped cat?” he said.

  I just stared at his hands.

  “I’ve looked at you every day you’ve been here and I see some frightened kid. Then you don’t come by for some time and I wonder what you’ve been doing. Maybe he’s dead, I think to myself. Then, out of the blue this kid turns up again, wearing clothes that he’s obviously bought, shaved for once, clean. Looking like he actually lives somewhere other than at the bottom of a bin and I think to myself, This kid is into some cash. Then I wonder where the fuck this kid gets money. He looks pretty fucking useless so I’m guessing that he’s not Alan Sugar’s new Apprentice.”

  He leaned over the table. “Is it drugs, kid?”

  “No,” I managed.

  He sat back. “Bullshit. It’s either drugs or something else that’s fucked you up. Tell me what it is.”

  So I told him. I told him almost everything. Why not? What damage could it do? I had nothing left to lose.

  He listened to the whole story without making a single sound
; without moving.

  When I finished I sat back in my chair and stared at the side wall.

  Max broke the silence in a way I wasn’t expecting. I was expecting disbelief. I was expecting a bunch of suspicious questions but what I got was, “How much?”

  “What?”

  “How much? How much cash do you have?”

  I grabbed my pack off the floor by my feet, put it on the table and pushed it towards him. He frowned at me and then looked down at the pack and opened it.

  When he finally looked up he had a new look in his eye, one I’d not seen before.

  “Half of this and the problem goes away forever,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “How fucking stupid are you? Half of this cash comes to me and your problem disappears forever. Don’t make me spell it out any further.”

  “You can do that?”

  “What, you think that working in this shithole is all I do?”

  “I thought you owned it.”

  “Yeah, it’s my shithole but it’s not my only one. I have a whole pile of shitholes, they just don’t all look as glamorous as this one.”

  “Why do you own a club?”

  “So that I can give away free drinks to fucked-up losers. What do you care? Do you want the deal or not?”

  I didn’t know what to think. I hated Ethan for what he’d done and he certainly deserved it. However, could I be responsible for whatever it was that Max was planning? Would he kill Ethan? Maybe just scare him? I couldn’t see Ethan being scared away. If I said yes then it was down to me. If I said no then Ethan would still be there. How many people like me did he have? How many times had he done this before? Would he keep doing it?

  “OK.”

  Max reached into the pack and took out the cash. He divided it up and put half back. He pushed the pack across the table but held on to it when I tried to take it.

  “Listen carefully,” he said, “you leave here today. You head out of London and you find somewhere to stay that’s more than an hour’s journey back. You make a lot of noise where you’re staying, you get to know people and let them know you’re around. You stay in a place that gives you a receipt; preferably one that notices when you’re coming and going. You don’t come back for a month. Understand?”